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ELOISE LUNDY PARK / TRINITY SKYLINE TRAIL, EAST OAK CLIFF JOPPA AND THE GREAT TRINITY FOREST, SOUTHERN DALLAS My preferred spot for quick access to wild fauna in the Trinity River near my The best way to experience the deep interior of the Great Trinity Forest is via the Trinity Forest Trail System, a series home in Oak Cliff is via the Bottoms neighborhood from one of Dallas’ most of twelve-foot wide paved concrete public hike and bike nature trails that wanders ribbon-like through the hardwood historic parks, Eloise Lundy Park, founded in 1915 by sustained community forest and along the Trinity and nearby wetland ponds and lakes including Lemmon Lake and Little Lemon Lake. The activism as Oak Cliff Negro Park during the early years of racial segregation trail system can be easily accessed from a free parking lot located just inside the entrance driveway to the Trinity River in Dallas, when black communities found themselves excluded from other Audubon Center. public city parks.1 One trail, the Great Trinity Forest Way Trail, takes you through portions of beautiful Joppa Preserve, an area originally Near Lundy Park’s multi-purpose courts at the corner of Cliff and Comal settled after Emancipation as a freedman’s town beginning in the late 1860s by formerly enslaved community mem- Painted Lady Butterfly / Vanessa cardui, streets, you’ll find the currently unmarked entrance to a paved public hike and (after M), watercolor and graphite on bers, including many whose forced labor built the wealth of nearby Millermore plantation owned by early Dallas elite bike nature trail, the Trinity Skyline Trail. Head up to the top of the levee, the Arches paper, 2017, courtesy artist William Brown Miller, the county’s biggest cotton grower at the time and one of the largest enslavers in North Texas. impending construction of which was made famous by Aaron Thibadeaux Cynthia Mulcahy and Talley Dunn Gallery. The 307-acre preserve was established in 1986 as part of the Dallas County Open Space Program, which seeks to pre- “Oak Cliff T-Bone” Walker, a native of the Bottoms neighborhood, in his won- serve, in the manner of the National Park system, vanishing wildlife habitats—a native forest of Bur, Shumard and Post derful 1929 debut recording, “Trinity River Blues.” Oaks and Black Willow, Green Ash, Eastern Cottonwood and Osage-Orange trees—and historically significant lands. Joppa is one of the last remaining freedman’s towns in Texas. From here I head south. The trail follows—with spectacular views of the downtown Dallas skyline—the flat floodway of the Trinity River’s western bank for about two miles until it finally intersects with the Santa Fe Trestle Trail hike and bike The other trail, the AT&T Trail—which runs at times alongside what I consider one of man’s follies: an exclusive private golf nature path near Moore Park, another historic public city park. Depending on the season, I have marveled at wild birds course recently built on public land—will take you deep inside the Great Trinity Forest. A May early morning bike ride on of every kind seen from this wide-open section of trail between the two historic parks. Red-shouldered Hawks, American the trail had me surrounded by literally thousands of Tawny Emperor and Hackberry Emperor species of butterflies floating Kestrels, Black Vultures and Turkey Vultures, Double-crested Cormorants and Anhingas, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Red- through the sun-dappled forest. Unforeseen beauty of the greatest magnitude. The experience left me speechless. winged Blackbirds—so noticeable by the brilliant flash of red on their wings seen in flight—ducks and shorebirds of all kinds, even magnificent flying flocks of American White Pelicans following the river channel in balletic v-formations. Fishermen at Little Lemmon Lake shared with me the best times—dawn and dusk—to catch sight of fantastically And this year especially, there have been huge numbers of egrets—both Snowy and Great Egrets—so graceful in flight or pink-feathered Roseate Spoonbills and prehistoric-looking Wood Storks, both climate threatened species of large standing sentinel along wetland pond edges. But also coyotes, foxes, and wild hogs; this two-mile stretch of trail never wading birds that migrate from the coast 450 miles up the Trinity during the late summer and early fall seasons. Dallas disappoints. serves as a major flyway for migrating and wintering birds and there may be no better place in Dallas to experience these phenomena. During the extraordinary perennial beauty of Texas wildflower season—especially this year’s super abundant and pro- longed 2019 crop—the trail between the levees feels like one giant butterfly preserve with an admirable variety of On a bike ride this past Sunday morning, I watched a flock of Black-necked Stilts make several lyrical passes around the species of all sizes and colors floating amongst the native flora. lake, their impossibly long bright pink legs extended in synchronized formation behind them. Magical. At dusk especially, you’ll spot Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Night-Herons silently patrolling for snails and crayfish in the shallow wa- ters of the lake. Look also for hawks, vultures, and other birds of prey such as Ospreys, elegant Crested Caracaras (aka Mexican Eagles) and sleek dive-bombing Mississippi Kites. You can also observe White-tailed Deer, American Beavers and Nutrias, Cottontail Rabbits, Opossums and Raccoons, and many different species of snakes and frogs, all native fauna who have made their home here for millennia, long before us, in this thriving river ecology. And keep at least one eye peeled for alligators (Alligator mississippiensis), too. UPPER AND LOWER CHAIN OF WETLAND CELLS Just north of the Trinity River Audubon Center lies the Upper and Lower Chain of Wetland Cells, a remarkable four-mile se- A FIELD GUIDE TO WILD FAUNA ries of interconnected wetland ponds that follows the Trinity River’s western bank. Created in recent years to provide need- ed flood control for heavy seasonal rains as well as an extended area of restored wildlife habitat, the managed ecosystem has been planted with diverse vegetation including native Texas grasses like big bluestem and switchgrass and dozens OF DALLAS, TEXAS of species of native aquatic plants. Over 140 species of resident and migratory birds, attracted to the great plant diversity, have been reported to date. My preferred entry point to the lower wetland cells is from South Central Park, a public city CYNTHIA MULCAHY park located in the historic Joppa neighborhood. With the sighting of several White Ibis (Eudocimus albus) wading birds with their exaggeratedly-curved bright orange beaks on my first trail visit to the lower wetland cells, I was completely charmed. I had no idea we live amongst such ancient birds immortalized by artists for centuries in artworks such as a tiny bronze Egyptian amulet from 712-332 BCE that can be found in the Dallas Museum of Art’s admission-free Egyptian Gallery. Artist’s Note: While painting birds of prey and insects in my artist studio a few years ago for War Garden, my ongoing body of work examining American militarism, I began to wonder where I might be able to observe in the natural en- vironment—and not just in my piles of library books or the internet—all the assorted hawks, eagles, dragonflies and Roseate Spoonbill / Platalea ajaja (after JJ), watercolor and graphite on Arches paper, 2017, courtesy artist Cynthia Mulcahy butterflies I had been painting. That and an unswerving desire for beauty as a counterweight to the chaotic American and Talley Dunn Gallery. political moment of 2016 had me wandering the fields, creeks, rivers and woods of southern Dallas near my home. Armed with a cheap pair of binoculars, I began exploring the nearby Trinity River and its environs in search of radical beauty. Admittedly, I was astounded by the variety of wild fauna I was able to discover via our city’s public green spac- MOORE PARK/SANTA FE TRESTLE TRAIL, EAST OAK CLIFF es. And I fell hard. Be it thousands of Tawny Emperor butterflies floating in the sunbeams of the Great Trinity Forest, a flock of White Ibis in silent poetic flight over a chain of wetland ponds, or a lone Wood Stork on the western bank of The Great Trinity Forest begins where South Dallas and Oak Cliff meet near Moore Park, one of Dallas’ most historic the Trinity River, a rather spectacular amount and variety of wildlife exists right here in our urban backyard. parks founded as Eighth Street Negro Park in 1938 during a golden decade of black civil rights activism and later re-named for Will Moore, an important early 20th-century Dallas black civil rights leader and NAACP activist.2 One of This discovery led me in 2017 to create A Field Guide to Flora and Fauna of Southern Dallas, a public art project in the largest urban bottomland hardwood forests in North America, the magnificent Great Trinity Forest is also the last fly-poster form available for free at southern Dallas branch libraries and public park rec centers. I’ve expanded the old-growth bottomland forest in North Central Texas. Never logged or cleared for cropland, what survives today—over ongoing public art project in this 2019 iteration to include green spaces in other parts of Dallas such as a recently 6,500 acres right next to a major American metropolitan city—is an ecological marvel. restored remnant of native Blackland Prairie hidden in a subdivision in North Dallas or a wide-open stretch of a public hike and bike nature trail between two of Dallas’ most historic public city parks near the Trinity River, and other loca- From Moore Park, head over to the adjoining Santa Fe Trestle Trail, the paved public hike and bike nature trail that tions.

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